


My Hero

by StressedBatchOfUploads



Series: My Hero [3]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Chaptered, Chosen Ones, F/M, FndcjsING FINALLY, M/M, Multi, Reader-Insert, Slow Build, Some Humor, Sorceress Reader, bUT IT ALL COMES TO FRUITION HERE FOLKS, kind of, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-03-26 08:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19002382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StressedBatchOfUploads/pseuds/StressedBatchOfUploads
Summary: They know the truth about you, now. You had to reopen some painful wounds to tell them, but they know. About you, about your family...But that doesn't matter. Their families do.It's time for a little cross-Kingdom roadtrip....Hopefully, it'll get your mind off of flames reflected in gold-etched doorknobs and purple eyes with a manic gleam...~Kenma sighs again. "Mom, Dad," He motions toward you. "Meet the Sorceress. (Y/n)," He motions to the gobsmacked man and woman. "Meet my parents."~Yamaguchi's face pinks, throwing his freckles out in sharp contrast. "I love Tsukki but, definitely not as siblings.""Oh,oh!" you gasp delightedly. "Why didn't you tell me?! I would've paired the two of you together for training a lot more!"~You weren't ready, echoes in your mind and your smile turns stiff. "You'd be surprised by the things I can handle."The old man shakes his head gently. "Just because you can handle them doesn't mean you should have to deal with so much so young."





	My Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the dark of your room, you can't read what's written of the history of Karasuno, but you've read the book so many times that it doesn't really matter if you can, you know it all by heart.
> 
> You go through the passages about your mother and father and aunt while closing the book and holding it close, ignoring your mind when it brings up how the book isn't nearly as warm as a giant magical tiger as you try to fall asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think it's called body horror...? yeah-
> 
>  
> 
> **BODY HORROR WARNING**
> 
>  
> 
> like, right at the beginning. i know some people can't really stomach that so, from ' _You lower your hands from your eye..._ ' to ' _...Right, so no magic for that._ ' just skip it, if you don't wanna read about that.
> 
> anyway! hi, guys! i'm not dead! though you probably wish i was! i've been working on getting my original stories published and unfortunately, because of that, fanfiction has been put on the back burner for now. i'm still posting and stuff, don't worry, just- a lot more infrequently than before.
> 
> "That's possible?"
> 
> apparently, yes. i'm surprised too.
> 
> 'My Hero' is the third Book and last part of the My Hero series, which means if you've stuck with me this far, you're in the final stretch! it's almost over--! what was that? no, i'm not crying, my face is sweating. it's part of what goes into writing this. another reason for why this took so long getting out was my 'challenge accepted' mode. i noticed that there's a little character count below where you put in all the text for the chapter, so my goal is to now break it. like the imp that i am. the first chapter was supposed to be a LOT longer than this, technically i'm still writing it, but then i looked back at My Apprentices and realized that it's been over a year since i finished that so maybe i shouldn't leave you guys hanging any longer.
> 
> so, you get a little prologue to tide you over! hope you enjoy!

The next morning when you wake up, your functioning eye is practically crusted shut with the crystallized remains of your dried tears holding your eyelashes together and as you try to force it open anyway a sharp pain lances through the opposite socket. The pain is so sharp it has you jolting upright and curling into a ball as you hold that side of your face protectively and hiss through your teeth. Sitting up only causes it to throb and you spit out a curse, getting out of bed quickly and going to your vanity to take a look at it.

You lower your hands from your eye and suck in a shallow gasp at what you see in the mirror.

The grey capillaries that branch out from your eye have turned a deep all-consuming black and are widened considerably, looking like veins now. They pulse out of time from your heart and each other and each time they do pain washes over your senses. The skin in between and around the veins is now the same grey that they used to be and has swollen and bloated like the skin of a corpse.

You raise your hand and send a small amount of magic into it to figure out what's wrong with it and promptly flinch hard as this makes it hurt even worse. Your mouth drops open and you watch in horror as the black veins spread even farther and the dead skin writhes like there's a living thing under it.

...Right, so no magic for that. Not even healing magic, you're too afraid to even try at this point. Luckily, you already have plans in place to visit the one person you know might be able to help with this. All you can do now is wrap it up and ignore the pain while you get your apprentices ready for travel. You only hope that your eye doesn't get worse until you actually get there.

You throw on one of your breezier dresses after a bit of deliberation. Nothing fancy, but it does drape around your feet and the long sleeves that drape down into a point at the hem  _do_ cover up the first knuckle of your fingers, and it's black, the dark color the most traditional to wear for any magic-user with real mettle. Your corset goes on underneath this one, then you cinch the laces that go up the front of the dress, and put on your light armor over top everything. You make it a habit to wear it anytime you go outside the Keep into Solidarity or when you travel from Solidarity to Yevoll. Lastly, you put on the hat that has apparently made you a recognizable icon, at least for anyone who saw those old carvings, smiling a bit when the brim lowers just right to one side how it's supposed to and then wincing when that causes the pain in your eye to flare up.

"You just have to get your apprentices ready. Come on, you can do this..." You leave your room and your Workshop, entering the living area with a sweep of a curtain.

Curled up on the couch together are Ginhi and Yai, no doubt savoring their reinstated contact after being apart, and hurt, no less. They look away from each other towards you when you enter and their brows immediately furrow in concern.

Being the more outspoken about his worries in the couple, Yai quickly asks, "Mistress, are you well?"

You grimace more at the question than the lingering pain. So much for keeping things... 'under wraps'. You quirk half a smile at your inner joke and immediately regret it. Yai makes to stand but you wave him off. "It's fine. I'll deal with it once we get to Pnas. Where are the boys?" You look around, having half expected to see them wandering about already.

"Still asleep," Ginhi tells you.

"Strange. Usually, they'd be up and eating--" You cut yourself off, frowning. Up and eating the breakfast Kaen made. Guess they had no motivation to rise early when they couldn't smell a good meal waiting for them. You shake your head. "No matter. I have just the thing for this." You disappear back into your Workshop and Yai and Ginhi look at each other quizzically.

A few minutes later there are loud pops and flashes of light from the hallway the boys' bedrooms are in and startled yelling as they trip out of beds and scramble into the living room where you smile serenely and the Shikigami look between you and the boys with bemused expressions.

You clap your hands together and let your smile widen into a grin, ignoring the pain. "Good morning! Who's up for a little flight?"

~

Tanaka, Yaku, and Bokuto stand in a line in front of you. Your other apprentices sit a bit farther back in small groups talking to each other and occasionally glancing over at the four of you. Ginhi rests near Kenma and Yai next to Ginhi.

You had let them all freshen up and get dressed, with armor you had summoned instead of letting them throw on whatever their idea of proper armament was that their dresser would provide for them. You weren't heartless after all, you're not making them train for this type of travel in  _pajamas_ , though you had to drag Oikawa away from coiffing his hair by the ear to free up one of the bathrooms for the rest of the boys.

You light up one eye to check the magical states of the three boys in front of you but promptly dispel it when it gives you a splitting headache. Holding a hand to your head with an annoyed scowl and locking your knees to keep fro swaying, you search for one of the tallest of your apprentices. "Tsukishima," He sits up from his slouch, switching his cool gaze from Yamaguchi to you to raise a brow. "C'mere for a sec."

He stands and saunters over, brow still raised, and stops in line with the others. The brow rises even higher when you motion him closer.

When he stands next to you, you wave at the other three, "Tell me what you see."

"Two over-excitable but well-meaning idiots and Yaku-san?"

While the two said idiots bemoan their new title loudly next to a bemused Yaku, you sigh heavily at Tsukishima's humor and stride over to Tanaka, who cuts himself off and looks at you with a curious eagerness when he notices your approach. You take him by the shoulders and maneuver him away from the two you had him lined up with to stand directly in front of Tsukishima. "I'm not talking outward appearances," you chastise dryly. " _Look._ The way I know you can and don't be afraid to tell me however bluntly or vaguely something might appear to you."

With a slight roll of them, Tsukishima's eyes light up the way they did after you had shown him the true enchantment over his glasses, causing a few gasps and the tensing of Tanaka's shoulders under your hands, as he is in the direct path of this enlightened gaze.

Tsukishima's eyes then cycle through a few colors as his brow furrows; first white, which has you moving farther behind Tanaka with a warning look thrown in the other boy's direction which makes him smirk lightly, and then green, which makes him flinch back slightly with a wince, then red, that makes him blink disorientatedly, then blue, that garners the same type of blinking and a frustrated frown, and finally, your color, which has him sucking in a sharp breath at what he sees.

"Tsukishima?" you call lightly, and in response he squints in concentration, causing poor Tanaka to shift around in discomfort. You rub your thumbs over his shoulders in reassurance and wait patiently for your apprentice to vocalize what he sees.

"He looks like the sky," he says after a long minute of perusal.

"What kind of sky?"

"Cloudy."

"And?"

He shrugs. "I dunno, calm?"

"Good," you enthuse cheerily, beaming first at Tsukishima and then Tanaka, ignoring the twinge in your eye that causes, as you move Tanaka back and bring Yaku forward. "Now what do you see?"

Tsukishima's brow furrows. "Movement."

"Swirling movement?" you ask, and nod understandingly when he does in agreement. "How fast?" When Tsukishima's mouth puckers in indecisiveness, you rephrase the question, "What emotion would you describe the movement as? Furious? Joyful?"

"...Patient," he decides after a moment of deliberation.

You turn to Yaku to study his expression for a second and then nod in satisfaction. "We can work with that." You switch Yaku out for Bokuto, who bounces up and down when you grasp his arm.

"Yes! Me next, I wanna be analyzed mystically," he enthuses, and you shush him gently with a chuckle.

"What do you see, Tsukishima? And this time, really don't hesitate to use any description that pops into your mind."

Tsukishima purses his lips. "...Wildness."

You clap your hand in delight, startling the light out of Tsukishima's eyes and getting the rest of your apprentices to jump in surprise. "Perfect!" You then turn fierce eyes on Tanaka and he starts to sweat nervously. "We'll start with you since you're going to be the one to transport almost everyone here."

His eyes widen. "Whoa, wait what?!"

You grin mischievously at him. "Do you want to know what your second aspect is?"

He gulps. "Um... yes?"

You point up at the sky, drawing the gaze of everyone who was looking upwards, to a floating mass of fluffy white cotton. "Clouds."

"Wait, clouds?" Noya interjects. "Isn't that pretty much the same thing as rain," he says, gathering the attention of those sitting around him.

"They are very closely interlinked, yes," You gesture with the hand in the air and feel relief when part of a cloud drifts down to you without any pain. It seems like as long as you don't do anything related to your eyes you'll be fine. You hold the ball of mist in your hand and change its shape with delicate, fluttering movements. "But clouds can do much more than just pour down rain, as I'm sure you and Tanaka are already aware of." With a raise of your eyebrow and an amused twitch to your lips, you let the small cloud in your hand go dark and entice a few spears of lightning to dance over its surface.

Both boys go pale. "You really did see us that day," Noya whispers fearfully.

You grin sharply. "Yes, I did. And it's fine," They let out twin sighs of relief. "I'm just glad you two didn't try any of that before I made you my apprentices."

"Why?" questions Daichi, looking between the two friends with a sudden uneasiness, probably thinking of all the times they could've tried that little trick you did so effortlessly.

You hum and then let the cloud in your hand lighten and melt away down into the early morning mist that surrounds all of your feet, or knees, in the case of those sitting on the ground, leaving a teeming ball of electricity behind. It cracks and snaps down at your hand and the air around it without prejudice but you don't flinch as it zings down into your skin. "Lightning is very unstable. It takes a lot of practice and fast reflexes to get it under any sort of control,"

You let a fork of it go free directly towards Noya and smile proudly when he's gone long before the ground where he was sitting is struck with a high crack, those who were sitting next to or around him belatedly yelp and scramble away.

"Excellent," you praise Noya, and his bewildered look of hurt confusion morphs into a flash of a smile. "As you can see, if you lose focus or loosen the reigns for even a fraction of a second, the outcome can be very destructive," You pointedly look down at the patch of grass you struck to draw all of their attention to the now blackened ground. "For those without this kind of tolerance it can even be fatal."

Daichi, Suga, Asahi, and Noya go pale as they remember that one instance in the fight with the Hanantula. It was a good thing that Daichi apparently has that kind of tolerance.

"Combine this lethal instability with the mobility of a cloud and... well," You let the lightning ball fizzle out. "While you were experimenting let's just say I toned down your excited sparks to a safer level, Noya."

"Thank you," he says, and you nod with a smile.

"Anyway, back to clouds. Good for providing revitalizing water to drought-stricken places, good vehicle for lightning, good for a bit of shade,  _and_ ," You gather the mist around your feet until it swirls tightly together and step onto it. "Good for transportation." You float your cloud higher in the air, hands out to your sides to keep balance on the small thing and to better direct your will. Yesterday really sapped most of your magic from you. Even with, an almost good, night's rest, you could feel yourself waning slowly where before you'd be fine for hours with this level of, of...  _parlor trick._

The awed look of your apprentices does nothing to alleviate your frustration, not even the fit to burst look Tanaka has at the realization that this is one of his abilities too.

Still, you shake away your frown to continue explaining, "Clouds don't move great distances on their own, however," You look pointedly at Yaku, but pause when a thought hits you. "And now that I think of it, they sometimes have difficulty forming too. Oikawa!" You motion him over. "Come here, please."

He gets up and steps in line with the others and you wait expectantly.

When nothing happens you turn a narrowed eye on Tsukishima beside you and dig your elbow into his ribs. He squints down at you for a second before he turns (f/c) eyes on Oikawa.

"Sunlight on water," he says after a moment.

"Good. Good, good. Oikawa," You face him. "You  _did_ figure out how to summon water from the air, right? I remember wet towels on Suga's head, but..."

"I did."

"Good. Now, you can feel how much water there is in the air with all this mist, right? How it clings to your skin?"

"Yes."

"Do you remember..." You stalk closer to him, eye narrow. "Being on top of the mountains of Fool's Pass?"

His eyes flicker side to side, remembering, but he's confused why. "Yeah...?"

"Tell me what the air felt like there."

He snorts. "Cold." When you don't so much as smile and just lift a prompting brow, he shifts from foot to foot, thinking back. "There was water there, but it felt... stiff? No, trapped."

You smile then. "By the cold, yes. What about the desert of Death's Hourglass? Tell me how the air felt there."

"There was practically no water there, what--"

"Practically," you cut him off. " _Practically,_ so that means there  _was_ some, where?"

"Um..." He thinks, then cringes a little. "In sweat, I guess?"

"Yes. In a regular desert, you would also find it around the few plants that are there, but Death's Hourglass is barren through... a means of magic. I'm sure all of you got a glimpse of one or more of the cause, correct?"

All of them nod with haunted faces. The boys who ventured into Death's Hourglass from Sefarl had encountered the Nomen too. Just after the last of them had made it through the protective barrier, a large group of Nomen had slammed against it and tried to get to them with mindless hunger overriding any self preservation instincts they had, if they had any, as they screeched in pain every time they ran against the barrier but they kept doing it. The boys stayed only as long as it took to make sure whatever was keeping the creatures back actually held before the nightmarish sounds of anguish drove them away.

"So no plants means you would have to rely solely on the sweat of you and your fellow apprentices if you wanted to summon water there," you continue, "And on Fool's Pass, you would have to coax it just a little out of its frozen state, which is something you will have to continuously do as we'll be high enough for water to freeze and fall down as snow without careful tending."

"Wait, what?" Oikawa asks.

"Oooh!!" Tanaka crows in sudden realization. "Then we're all going to Yevoll by riding a cloud?!"

"Yes--" Screams of elation from most of the boys overpower your voice for a moment, so you speak louder, "But I need you all to  _focus_ so none of you ends up falling from the sky!" you huff. They quiet down, so you go on, "Tanaka," He straightens. "You already know how to bring down small clouds so I want you to try bringing down progressively bigger ones. Start with what you're comfortable with and then send it back up to bring down more, okay?" He nods. "Good. Oikawa, you work with Tanaka to figure out what ratios of water to air is best for forming the type of clouds he has the most control over."

They nod and move off a ways to get started.

You turn to the two boys left in front of you. "Yaku, I'll help you in a minute but first," You face Bokuto. "Have  _you_ read any of the books I left you all?"

He perks up. "I read the one Akaashi was reading!"

When you turn a raised brow to Akaashi, he answers, " _How to Get Your Way!_ "

You look at Bokuto incredulously. "You read the book about telepathic suggestion?"

He shrugs. "It was interesting."

You shake your head. "I guess that's good, seeing as how you two will need to work together for you to be able to communicate with everyone else in the future." You snap your fingers and a book lands in your outstretched hands. " _This_ was the book you were meant to read." On its cover ' _Animal Anatomy_ ' is printed non-whimsically. "Along with Suga's medical book."

"What? Why..." He trails off as you flip through ' _Animal Anatomy'_ 's pages with lightning speed.

You stop once you get to a diagram of a horned owl, looking between it and Bokuto a couple times before nodding and then projecting the diagram to a bigger size using an illusion. The diagram focuses on the owl's bones and how the muscles and tendons attach to them. Next to that, you put up an illusion of human anatomy that you know by heart, being a Healer. This illusion also focuses on the bones of the human body and how the muscles and tendons attach to them.

You point at the illusion with the human, "This is you now." You then point at the illusion of the owl, "This is what you have to turn into."

" _Turn into?_ " Akaashi, Yaku, and Suga ask in concerned concert.

Bokuto looks between the two illusions in surprise before a wide grin stretches his face and he starts whooping loud enough that everyone has to cover their ears, Yamaguchi and Ginhi doing so with especially pained faces. " _Heck yeah, baby!_ Owl transformation,  _whoo!_ "

"Not just owl transformation," you correct, rubbing your ear to stop its ringing and fixing your illusions as they had skewed a bit in your discomfort. "Animal transformation. As in, any animal. But the first animal you understood was an owl, so you'll have the easiest time transforming into that."

"Are you sure about that, Ki-uh... (Y/n)-chan?" Kuroo corrects himself with a small smirk when you glare warningly at him. "Owls are supposed to be quiet, right? Bokuto's pretty much the opposite of that."

"Dude, hurtful."

"You know I say it with love, man."

"Oh, okay then."

"That may true, Kuroo," you cut in. "But more than silence, Bokuto has what is vital for any avian." You stride over to Bokuto and reach out, squeezing and prodding at his biceps. "Wing muscles."

Grinning with a small blush, he lifts his arm and flexes for you. You thank him with a small smile and go about making sure he actually has the right amount of muscle strength for flight in first one arm and then the other. Bokuto preens under the attention the entire time.

Having overheard, Tanaka pauses in bringing down a cloud to grumble, "I've got wing muscles too."

"Maybe," you acquiesce, "But not enough for extended flight like Bokuto. And even then, he'll have to come in for a rest every couple of miles, just in case," You move around to his back, prodding the muscles over his shoulder blades, on either side of his neck, and his sides. "Move your arms up and down," you direct, and he does. "This is your first flight so you're going to tire quickly no matter what you do, but I want you to start building up stamina for it now. Landing to rest will be especially hard, so I'll help you with that for now, but looking at your legs..." You eye them critically. "You'll have no problem with it once you have practice, but I'll teach you that only when there's safe air for you to fly in and stable ground to land on."

Bokuto turns to face you. "So do I pass inspection?"

"Yes. You should be fine for flying.  _But before that,_ " you raise your voice to be heard over his cheering. You point at the owl illusion. "The logistics of flying."

Muffled chuckling echoes from Akaashi at Bokuto's expression of absolute dismay. "But it's just  _flying!_ Don't you just... do it?"

" _Birds_ 'just do it', it's a natural instinct for them.  _You_ are not a bird so you will crash and break something if you don't learn."

"He's gonna break something," Kenma deadpans almost silently.

"Bet you he won't," Kuroo counters just as silently.

Kenma eyes him. "Bet what?"

Kuroo pauses and looks up in thought at that. "Guess we can't bet any of our usual stuff, huh?" A Cheshire grin grows on his face then, and he whispers something you can't make out to Kenma, whose eyes widen.

He considers Bokuto and his eyes very briefly flicker to you before he holds out his hand to Kuroo, "Deal."

Kuroo takes it, still with that shit eating grin, and the entire interaction worries you but you choose not to dwell on it. "Now, the most important thing that aides a bird's flight is its bones," you begin, setting your mind to a more useful task than worrying. "Despite common sayings, they are  _not_ hollow and are, in fact, just extremely light. Once you transform, you will feel significantly lighter and probably lightheaded, but it's fine. Just give yourself a chance to adjust." You enlarge the wing part of the illusion. "Also, when you change, your bones  _will change shape._ It's different for everyone, but you can expect deep discomfort to searing pain. Luckily, the owl's bones are not too different from a human's so the only drastic changes to your bone structure will be your hands, feet, and skull, to allow for a beak, of course."

Bokuto shakily raises a hand. "Um, about that searing pain thing? I'm not so sure I want to do that, is that going to happen every time?"

Your eye softens. "The pain only happens the first time you transform into a new animal, once your bones know what they're doing, it will only feel like you're cracking a knuckle, if you're used to that sort of thing, anyway. I just wanted to warn you because the absolute worst thing you can do during a transformation is panic. It can lead to only half completed transformations which can cause severe health complications when you change back." You walk forward and place a hand on his shoulder. "Just remember, I won't let anything bad happen to you, okay?"

He smiles. "Okay." He then crouches into a ready position. "I'm ready! Tell me what to do."

You look down at him with an eyebrow raised. "We're still not done yet."

He groans and flops down to sit. "But I want to be an owl already!"

You wave a hand. "We're almost done, just a few more things about how your bones are going to change and then a couple of basics on how to get off the ground. Once you're finally in the air the instincts of your form will take over and guide you."

"Wait," Kenma speaks up, wide eyes darting between you and a suddenly gleeful looking Kuroo. "I thought you said he had to learn and not count on instinct since he's not an actual bird?"

"Well, yes. He has to learn how to take off, but once he's actually in the air it should be fine. Plus, I said I would help him with landings."

"But..." Kenma trails off with a crestfallen expression that turns quickly into acute irritation when Kuroo starts humming happily beside him, swaying lightly to and fro with a victorious smile on his face.

"O...kay," You decisively turn back to Bokuto, not sure and not wanting to know what that was all about. You just want to hurry up and make it to Pnas, your eye is starting to twinge in pain all on its own. "As for how your bones will change, we'll focus on your hands and feet since your beak will basically be the same as your mouth function-wise, just a different shape." You grab his hand to pull out his arm and point to different parts of it as you explain, "Everything from your shoulders to your wrists will basically stay the same, but your fingers," You wiggle a couple of his individually before you hold them all together. "Will fuse together and elongate. That limb will move the same as your hand does if you move your wrist, but if you try to move your fingers while you have wings, you'll be, very minutely, moving your feathers. That's something unique to shapeshifters. Actual birds must carefully groom their feathers to make sure they stay in the optimal position for flight."

You let go of his arm and step back. "For your feet-" You pause at the sight of his heavy boots. With a shrug, you kick off one of yours, as you also have on heavy armor over your black dress, and point down at your bare foot after yanking your sock off. "Your last two toes," You do your best to wiggle them and only manage to curl your pinkie toe around. "Will shrink down into nothing and your first three," You wiggle these with a lot more success. "Will even out in size and taper into claws. The heel of your foot," You turn your foot out to point at it. "Will then take the two toes that were absorbed and fuse them to grow out again there, it'll only be a small bit bigger than the top three when it's done. If you do this movement," You curl all your toes down towards the ball of your foot. Bringing up your hand, you curl your fingers into the shape of claws and clack them together in a mimicry of how his owl claws will move in response. "Your transformed feet should do this. It'll feel weird at first but you'll get it."

Bokuto stares at your foot as he rocks back on his spine and kicks out one of his own, a look of deep concentration on his face as he tries to imagine what the change in appendages will feel like, you're sure that he's wiggling his toes. He does the same thing with his hands, holding his fingers together and flapping his wrist and then staring a bit outwards from his arm as he faintly wiggles his fingers.

He looks back at you. "Okay. What's next?"

You grin. "Next, you run."

He waits for what you're going to say after that, but you just stare at him expectantly.

"Wait, you mean now?"

"Yeah. Full steam ahead, knock yourself out."

A slow smile spreads across his face. "Okay then." He rockets up and starts running in circles; around you, around the other apprentices, around the edges of your ward around the meadow. "So, what am I doing?" he yells in the middle of a lap.

"Building momentum!" you yell back. "Again, most real birds, except for maybe albatross, wouldn't need to do this because they've been preparing their whole lives, but  _you_ are a shapeshifter. Your arms, no matter how transformed they are, have never been prepared for the strain of a takeoff, so in order to build up the energy needed to propel you forward and up into the sky, you need to run!"

"For how long?" Bokuto puffs.

"Depends," you holler, bringing your fingers to your mouth to whistle, short but high. It takes a second and you worry for as long as it takes you to remember that the Dryads had your broom the last time you saw it, having recovered it from where you had landed a fair distance away from the entrance to the Troll's Caves where you were taken. It passes through your wards unimpeded and floats down in front of you, still horizontal, still ready to go. You hop up onto it and silently urge it to follow Bokuto from enough of a distance that you still have to yell, "Feel the wind against your face?"

"Yeah," he huffs.

"Feel it buffeting against you?" you call.

He runs a bit faster, "Yeah!"

"Feel it lifting you up?" you yell, grinning.

"YEA-! Wait, what?"

You grin wider and flick your fingers at him, getting the wind to curl around him and hoist him into the air, making him yelp in shock and flail his arms around instinctively, a few feathers already sprouting from them as the sleeves and bracers you had enchanted disappear to make room for the coming change.

"That's it!" you encourage, "Now  _change!_ You will go even faster than you did on the ground if you move the motion of your legs to your arms, up and down," You keep the wind steady below him as he does so, flapping as earnestly as he ran. "Feel the wind over every inch of your skin," His feathers grow longer and in more places to help him feel it better, his clothes and armor disappearing completely as his feathers replace them. "Put your head into the wind!" You move the breeze so that it supports him and buffets against his front and whether by instinct or your instruction, he ducks into it, wings tilting and stretching to keep him balanced. "Now tuck your feet in..." He does, and they change into talons as they do. "Good! You're an owl, Bokuto!"

He lets out a long questioning chirp which stops abruptly when not only does he not hear his own voice, but hears with his... face, is the only way he can really explain it. But then he registers what you said and lets out a long uninterrupted screech of glee, prompting the more advanced of hearing to again shield their ears.

You move up next to Bokuto on your broom where you're keeping him stationary a few feet off the ground with a steady gale. "Ready to take it up a notch?" You point up at the open sky above you.

Bokuto lets out another shriek and looks determinedly in front of him.

"Alright, this is where those arm muscles come in then," You move in front of him, the wind parting around your back and coming back together to keep battering against Bokuto, since he would have a hard time in this form of moving his eyes to look at you himself, and hold your arms out to either side of you, moving them down simultaneously. "Push up."

He does and he gains a little altitude, you move the wind with him, "Again," you tell him.

So he does it again, and again, and again, until you and he are high above the heads of your other apprentices, but not so high as to be too close to your wards. You're a little below him, just in case his wing beats falter. You'd slowly ebbed away the breeze supporting him until he was keeping himself in the air but you'd kept up the buffeting wind that kept him in one place without moving forward.

"I'm going to set you loose now," you tell him, still in his line of sight. "If you have any trouble, I will catch you so don't worry about that and just fly. When you get tired, come towards me for a landing, got it?"

He screeches and you let your influence over the wind go, ducking as he sails past you, now carried by the natural breeze. Bokuto lets out a shriek of excitement that makes you smile a bit, pain in your eye be damned because that was a sound of pure contagious joy, but that smile falls a little, along with your stomach, when he wobbles in the air. He levels out though, and even as you breathe a sigh of relief, your heart is beating double-time where it's still lodged in your throat and your fingers twitch restlessly in front of you, ready to call the wind to him at a moment's notice.

Under your careful but unguiding watch, Bokuto does a few sweeps of the entire meadow in long... not exactly graceful, but energetic laps. Tilting his head this way and that to see everything in a new bird's eye view and chirping happily every few minutes, he's flapping a bit  _too_ much, he's going to tire himself out too quickly, but he'll get the hang of it with practice. He flies lower, close to his friends, and you follow, wanting to keep yourself between him and the ground. He swoops at a couple of their heads, not reaching out with his beak or claws, but getting worryingly close, and you do nothing but smile lightly when Tsukishima and Yamamoto call out protests. Kuroo only ducks with a good-natured smirk when it's done to him, Kenma bats in Bokuto's retreating direction with a pout, Hinata and Noya laugh while they duck, but it's Akaashi's reaction you pay the closest attention to.

When Bokuto swoops at him, he chirps something and Akaashi answers while doing nothing more but closing his eyes against the air Bokuto's wings waft into his face, "Yes, your flying is very impressive, Bokuto-san."

"Very good," you call out to Akaashi over Bokuto's victory hoot, "You're still able to read his mind even in this form."

He arches a brow up at you. "Yes...?"

"Mind readers and shapeshifters are often paired together in battle," you explain. "If the shapeshifters don't have a secondary ability to speak while in animal form, the mind reader can interpret for them and help them and help them to focus when the shapeshifter's animal instincts start to take over too much." Bokuto flies through the leaves of a tree that's inside your wards and bursts out the other side hooting cheerfully. "You certainly have your work cut out for you..."

"What did you mean by, 'still able to read his mind', then?"

"Oh, well... mind reading  _and_ shapeshifting as a form of magic is varied from person to person. For shapeshifters, there are those that simply change into the shape of an animal but never have access to the animal's instincts, which makes it extremely difficult to adjust to each form; or there are those that, when they change, their mind loses all forms of human thought and they're bound completely to the instincts of the animal whose form they're in until they can change back. Bokuto is in the middle of these extremes, luckily, but there's no way to be certain just how close he is to one or the other."

"He's not dangerous, is he?" Daichi calls up, concerned not only for everyone else, but Bokuto too.

"No, of course not." You pause. "Well, not now. We've yet to see if he's the type to go feral when fighting in animal form." Worry briefly makes an appearance in your expression, but you continue, "For mind readers, there are quite a few more extremes than there are for a shapeshifter, simply because the human mind, and therefore any magic related to it, is very complex. But the most relevant extreme in this case are mind readers that can't tap into the thoughts of others who are not like them. They're not able to read a lot of people, whether because the person's thought process is so different than theirs all they can hear is static, or the person is so different from the mind reader that they subconsciously decide they would never be  _able_ to understand how they think, so that person's mind is cut off from them before they can even try to access it,"

You smile lightly down at Akaashi. "Your curiosity," You pause to lightly cough out, " _Nosiness,_ " That Akaashi takes a moment to look dryly offended at. "Has kept you far away from that, but there are those that have unconsciously cut themselves off from the mind of shapeshifters when they're in animal form simply from the prejudice that they wouldn't be able to read the minds of animals."

You pause as you hear Bokuto screech and look up to see him fly towards you. You hold up a forearm and will your (precious metal) bracer around it, offering it up to him as a perch to land on. "Slow your momentum and try to land on my arm," you call out to him. Bokuto straightens up and flaps more to the front of himself as he tries to slow down and you call a bit of wind to help in his efforts. He manages to latch onto your arm but from a weird angle, so before he ends up hanging upside down from your arm like a bat, you hug him to your chest to steady him, getting a wing in your face for your efforts as he also tries to stop himself from toppling over.

He chirps in victory anyway and you snort softly as you release him to stand on your arm on his own. "But you managed to see Bokuto as himself rather than 'just an animal'," you direct to Akaashi with a pleased smile, "So good for you."

Bokuto hoots questioningly but you smile and shake your head at him, magicking up a leather pauldron for your right shoulder from your wardrobe and raising Bokuto to it, who steps on obligingly and then turns around to face the same way you are, pecking gently at a few strands of your hair after a moment.

You tolerate the grooming with the patience gained from having been groomed by a giant magical tiger for years, and ignore the twinge of pain brought on by thinking about Kaen as you float down to the next apprentice you'll train who had sat down in the meanwhile. "Yaku, when your power first manifested, you flew into the sky, right?"

"And couldn't get down, yeah."

You chuckle a little ruefully. "Yeah, it does that to everyone the first time, sorry."

He furrows his brow. "What does?"

"Your second aspect, the wind." You motion him forward and, looking bewildered, he gets up and goes. "Now, I want you to close your eyes," He does. "Hold your arms out," He does. "And gently call it to you in your mind." He does, and the wind comes to him eagerly. So eagerly, in fact, that you have to use some of your own influence to calm it down, it  _really_ likes him.

Instead of lifting Yaku into the air within its embrace like it was aiming to before, it gently weaves and curls around him, sliding through the gaps in his fingers and armor, tangling and combing through his hair. He takes a deep breath of it as it moves around him and when he exhales it, the wind moves faster in response.

"Good... Can you feel how happy it is?" you ask curiously.

"I can. It kinda..." It dances around his legs and brushes against his cheek, making him pull away with a half smile. "It kinda feels like an overgrown puppy."

The wind does  _not_ take kindly to that and gusts down at him sharply from above, making Yaku splutter and duck, before it disappears altogether.

You chuckle heartily, unable to laugh like you want to with your cheek already sending you warning twinges. "The wind is very excitable, yes, but it is an ancient force and so it doesn't appreciate being compared to small adorable things." You invite the wind back into the area with a tentative beckoning and it comes, begrudgingly, swirling around your booted feet that dangle from your broom with an affronted surliness. "Perhaps you should try addressing it with the respect it deserves?"

Yaku opens his eyes to blink them incredulously at you. "Address the wind?"

"That is what I just said, yes."

"Um... wind?" Nothing happens. He looks to you for help and, smiling in amusement, you mouth 'respect' at him. He sighs and searches the sky for answers. "Oh... Mighty Gale that crosses vast plains in an instant,"

The wind swirls around you once, ruffling Bokuto's feathers lightly, and then curls around Yaku once again, appeased with the correct moniker.

"Very good. Knowing how to sweet talk the wind is very important when first getting to know it. Until it trusts you it can be very mercurial in temperment."

Yaku looks up from the ends of his tunic billowing in the breeze to warily eye you. "Mercurial, how, exactly?"

"Well, just don't ever try calling it a puppy while you're in the air or you'll have to learn how to scream praises loud enough to be heard over the air roaring past you as you fall to the earth  _very quickly_."

Yaku gulps and looks at his billowing clothes in a much different way than he was before.

You frown. "Uh-uh, don't do that." He looks up at you questioningly. "The wind is finicky, true, but you  _must_ trust it. At times it may not listen to you or leave you when it seems that you need it most, but it  _is_ an ancient entity that's wiser than all of us. It will never leave you astray unless someone else is forcing it to. If you do not trust it with your life, it will never be able to protect it to its fullest extent, do you understand?"

Yaku nods seriously.

"Good. Now, the wind may not communicate the same way we do, not all the time, at least," Yaku tilts his head curiously at that. "But it can speak to you in a way that gets its feelings across."

"Oh, I definitely heard it," Yaku comments dryly, causing you to chuckle.

"The best way to strengthen the bond between you an the wind is to listen to it, to talk to it," You smile. "And to play with it."

"Play with it?" he asks.

In explanation, you point upwards.

Yaku slumps in reluctance. "Ah..."

"It's your decision to do it, but seeing as the full extent of your power relies on you having the closest bond with the wind as you can, I recommend doing it as soon as possible, as much as you can." You smile fondly in remembrance. "When it first came to me, I spent as much time in the sky as I could, talking about whatever came to mind and pulling the most awesome pranks from above." Your eyes twinkle in delight. "I never felt safer than when I was with the wind."

You smile as part of it breaks away from Yaku to caress the cheek opposite of the side Bokuto is on tenderly.

"It's a dear friend of mine and I hope, in time, you'll feel the same about it as I do, Yaku."

The fondness you have for the wind is still in your eye when you rest it on Yaku, and the softness in your expression, even if it's not for him, has him blushing. "I'll try." The smile you give him then makes the blush worsen.

You leave the two of them alone to talk, nudging your broom over to Tanaka and Oikawa. "How are the two of you doing over here?"

They both turn and smile at you and their distraction causes the cloud they were working with, which was big enough for about four to six people to stand on, to drop down and vanish into the mist around their feet.

The three of you stare down into that mist for a moment.

You point down into it. "What just happened here?"

"Uh..." Tanaka grins at you innocently. "I was distracted by your beau--" Oikawa slaps a hand over his mouth hard enough for him to shout in pain, and muffled by Oikawa's hand though it is, it's still fairly loud.

Oikawa takes his turn to grin while keeping his hand over Tanaka's mouth despite his struggling. "To be honest, this isn't the first time this has happened. I think Tana-chan here's got some nervous jitters," he tells you conspiratorially, earning a denying shout from his still struggling captive. "I've been giving him plenty of support, though, don't worry!" Tanaka squints murderously at him and, _surprisingly_ , this serves to worry you even more.

With a sigh, you tell Oikawa, "Let him go." He does, and he ducks Tanaka's irate swing at his face with a speed that suggests he expected it. Tanaka halts in rearing back for another try when you impatiently clear your throat, and lowers his now unclenched fist to his side with a sheepish smile, not seeing the smug smirk Oikawa throws him. "Tanaka's power is the ability to control the clouds. How stable they are, their elevation, when they precipitate." You speak over Oikawa's forming sly remark, "However, this control is only possible if the right elements are present, that's why I asked you to work with him, Oikawa."

He frowns at the accusation in your tone. "Hey, I'm making the air plenty humid for him!"

Your brow furrows. "Humidity is not the only thing required for a- oh." Your face clears as you realize your mistake. "I haven't taught you that yet, have I?"

"Taught me what?" Oikawa asks with a raised brow as you hop off your broom, hopefully hiding the way the swift dismount makes the world around you spin.

"You were making such progress on your own that I just assumed," you continue without answering. "Which I really shouldn't have, that always leads to miscommunication." You move in front of him and gesture promptingly. "Summon some water for me." He hesitates, still confused. "Come on."

He does, and a small orb of clear liquid the size of his fist swirls into wobbly being above his right hand. You bring yours up next to it, palm curled towards the orb.

"Stop my hand," you say, and swipe it through the orb. The water breaks formation and spills to the ground, neatly lopping the mist at both of your feet in half.

Oikawa jumps back a few steps, shaking water off his hand. "What was that for?!"

You shrug innocently. "Sorry, go ahead and summon some more." When he eyes you suspiciously, you smile guilelessly.

Hesitantly, he summons more in a wobbly orb.

"Stop my hand," you say again as you dart forward and swipe through it.

Oikawa manages to move his hand in time enough to not be splashed, and squints at you. You stare back at him placidly, and gesture for him to try again.

He does, and you disrupt his orbs again and again and again.

The next time you swipe at the orb, you change your wording, "Freeze my hand."

With a high ring your hand stops mid-air. You and Oikawa stare in surprise at your hand locked in half an orb, your fingers having divided the other half into curving icy shards. You try to wiggle your fingers, but they don't budge.

You laugh. "Very good. Now unfreeze it." He looks at you like you're insane. "You know how it feels when it's frozen, and you know how it feels when it's liquid. You turned liquid into ice, just reverse the process." When he still looks hesitant, you delve into the mechanics. "Water is made up of trillions of tiny molecules, connected to each other, but loose. Free to move, flexible, but easily separable. When these connections firm, freedom of movement is lost, but they're much harder to break, they--"

"Freeze," Oikawa murmurs, intensely studying your trapped hand.

You smile. "Right. So to return freedom of movement, you must--"

"Melt the connections," he says as the ice loses its cold and hold over your hand. A bit too quickly.

"Wait--" You gasp as the ice abruptly fades into mist, completely skipping the part in the middle where it turns to water. You blink, hand free but frozen in place with your bewilderment this time. "Well."

Oikawa's shoulders are up to his ears in contriteness. "Sorry, I- shit, your hand is red. I burned you."

"No," you dismiss, shaking out your hand and looking it over. "You're not capable of burning me. This is from the ice, and I expected it so it's fine." You look up at him. "Now let's try it without my hand in the mix. I would say to keep going but," You smile. "You seem a little freaked out by a little bit of frostbite."

He shakily returns your smile and tries again, an intense look of concentration furrowing his brow. Before he tries to freeze anything like that, you reach out and smooth it away.

When he looks at you in surprise, you smile again, softly. "Relax."

He stares at you and then takes a deep breath. He forms a sphere, and then freezes it, preserving its perfectly round shape and leaving it cloudy in the center, frozen solid.

"Good. Now this time, melt the connections, but only enough to loosen them up again."

He does so beautifully, leaving a once again fluid orb.

"Excellent!" You beam. "Now try making it into the mist again, but keep it together instead of letting it dissipate."

"I thought making clouds was my thing," Tanaka grumps.

"There's a difference between clouds and mist, even though they're very similar; two, actually. Altitude, and ice."

"That's why you're having me freeze stuff," Oikawa flicks a glance at you but hurriedly looks back at what he's doing when a plume of mist cascades out of his grip to join its like in the grass.

"Think of a cloud as a book," You offer as explanation. "The cover, pages, and writing are the altitude, air, and mist. What binds it all together is the ice." You shake your head at yourself. "Me asking you to make clouds without any ice is the same as me asking you to read a book without binding. Possible, but a lot more work to keep together in practice. I apologize. My head is..." Your eye throbs and you grimace. "Not where it should be today."

"We all have off days," Oikawa offers distractedly, repeating words said to him though he doesn't truly believe them himself. He's still focused on keeping hold of his mist, however, and so doesn't notice when his words don't abate the self-flagellating look in your eye.

Once he has a good grip on controlling it, you tell him, "Make the mist cold."

He pauses a moment, brows furrowed. "I think that did it?"

You hold up a finger and raise a brow in question and when he nods, tentatively poke it inside of the fog. It quickly chills your skin and you pull it out to shake warmth into it. "Good. Now freeze parts of it."

"Freeze... the mist," he says, staring into it blankly.

"Yep," you chirp, walking over and dragging Tanaka to him. "He'll help too, don't worry."

"Okay," he exhales, rolls his shoulders and furrows his brows again.

You prod Tanaka into raising his hands as well and gradually... you see the mist in Oikawa's hold begin to sparkle, even though there's not enough sunlight on this cloudy morning for it to reflect like that. Tanaka's eyes brighten and then his hand begin to move, swooping and curling motions, thickening the mist around the sparkles until it's  fluffy white.

You watch with pride as a cloud forms between their hands and as they look up and grin at each other in shared victory. This one, you know, will not fade away so easily.

"Very good, both of you," you tell them in warm tones, and they flash their victorious grins at you. You return the grin and let it curl into a smirk. "Now you just have to make it big enough for everyone to stand on."

They both look at the small orb only as big as Oikawa's fist and groan.

Bokuto's screech of a laugh rings in your ear and your smirk stays firmly in place even as you bite back your own laugh at their frustration. "Hey, at least you've got some practice under your belt now."

They both choose to say nothing and get to work, with a small shrug, you leave them to it and head over to where all the other apprentices lounge on the ground and talk amongst each other. Your approach silences their conversations as they give you their undivided attention.

"Hinata!" An orange head meerkats above the rest. You grin at him. "Today you learn to fly with interference."

He groans but gets up and goes to you obediently and you both walk below where Yaku is being playfully tossed about in the air. He startles whenever he can't feel the breeze below him but he does laugh whenever he's caught.

"Yaku," you call up, the wind pauses it tosses so he can look down, "Can you join us, please?"

His lips move but whatever he says is too quiet to hear from the ground. His face shows amusement a couple times before he's finally lowered to the ground. He rubs his head sheepishly once he's in front of you, Bokuto, and Hinata. "Heh, sorry. The wind really likes me, I guess."

You smile. "Don't be sorry. I did say I wanted the two of you to get along, remember?"

"Get along with who?" Hinata chirps.

You, Yaku, and Bokuto look at him, but you push it aside. Though you want your apprentices to pay attention to how their fellow apprentices' powers work, you can't honestly expect them to sit through an explanation on how someone else's ability works. "The wind. It's a very good friend of mine," you explain.

His eyes go big and shiny. " _Whoooaaa_ , you're friends with the wind?! That's so cool! Are you friends with that owl too?"

You blink and share a look of amusement with 'the owl'. "I sure hope so. Because this is Bokuto."

"Bokuto-san?" He blinks at Bokuto, and his eyes widen. "You turned Bokuto-san into an owl?!  _You can do that?!_ "

"No, Hinata, Bokuto's power is to transform into different animals--"

" _That's amazing,_ " Hinata gasps, and Bokuto puffs up his feathers so much they start to tickle your ear. "Even more amazing than the wind thing- ah, no offense Yaku-san, wind-san, if you can hear me."

The wind whistles by warningly but thankfully does nothing else, letting you release the breath you were holding in relief. "Okay," you divert shakily, "The reason I called you two over here, and Bokuto, this is also including you," You reach up and gently pet the feathers on his breast and he chirps in understanding. "You three," You glance from Bokuto, to Yaku, to Hinata. "Are going to be my solo fliers."

Hinata's eyes have gone from shiny to sparkly. "That sounds so cooool~!" 

Bokuto hoots in agreement.

"What do you mean by solo fliers?" Yaku asks.

"Out of all my apprentices, you three and Tanaka are the only ones capable of some form of flight. I've put Tanaka in charge of carrying everyone else, but to make it easier on him, I'll be on my broom and you guys will be flying on your own."

Bokuto screes.

"Yeah, you're still welcome to come to me to rest when you get tired, don't worry." He smoothes out of his anxious ruffle and you look at the other two. "Bokuto's limited by not being used to this form but you two should be fine until we get to Pnas since you'll be relying on magic."

Hinata bounces on his toes. "So we're flying on our own the whole way there?!"

You boop his nose to startle him into calming down. "I want you to stay with us when we're in the air, but yeah, you'll be flying strictly under your own power."

" _WHOOOOOO~!!!_ "

"SO THAT MEANS," you yell over his celebrating until he quiets and listens with a sunny smile, still bouncing, "That you need to learn how to fly in tough conditions. That stretch of sky from here to Willow Wake is a walk in the park compared to the route we're taking today, so! I'm going to have you," You grin at Hinata. "And you," You tickle Bokuto's feathers. "Get a taste for what some of these tough conditions will be like and how you'll need to coordinate with each other by having you fly with," You turn your shit-eating grin on Yaku, "You."

He jerks back. "Me?"

"When in the sky, you and the wind will be the strongest force out there. The wind knows how to breeze past and leave other fliers alone, but it's mischievous. It's up to you to courteously remind it of the time and place. And while you do that," You glance at Hinata and Bokuto. "You two can get a feel for what it's like when the wind isn't working in your favor."

Bokuto and Hinata screech their enthusiasm in tandem, ready to go, but Yaku looks particularly reluctant, just having gotten familiar with how playful the wind can be. At your cue, Bokuto and Hinata take off, hooting in glee and screeching in excitement and discomfort born from not being used to flying yet, and the wind quickly yanks a startled Yaku up after them.

You sit back on your broom and hover just off the ground, watching them carefully, prepared to swoop in if one of them starts to drop, and smile a bit as Hinata and Bokuto twirl around each other playfully and start up a game of aerial tag. The wind tries to either join in or mischievously disrupt them, making Bokuto have to flap frantically to keep stable while squawking and Hinata drop out of the air with a high-pitched squeak for the hot second it takes for him to restart his blown out flames, and Yaku's strained face as he tries to both reprimand and praise has some kind of tension loosing inside you.

The vision of the three of them, playing with and learning about their powers, goes soft and hazy and a little distant until there's pressure on your shoulder that keeps you from falling off your broom and you snap out of whatever trance you were falling into.

"So what's wrong with your eye?" the pressure on your shoulder asks, and you stiffen before turning to Tsukishima.

"I don't--" You get ready to lie, stopping when he raises an unimpressed eyebrow before you can even get the whole lie out. "It'll be fine," you amend. The pressure on your shoulder is still there, him, carefully concealing the fact that he's holding you up by leaning into you. You pull away and support yourself, angrily pushing down the wave of dizziness sitting up gets you.

"You know I can see it in your magic, right?" No, you did not. That was worrying. "It doesn't look good." Even more worrying.

"It'll be fine," you repeat, trying to convince yourself now and shoving away the urge to ask him just how your eye looks with his sight. "We just need to get to Pnas. Tanaka, Oikawa," you call out, "How are you doing over there?"

Their cloud looks just about big enough to fit everyone and Tanaka works on enlarging it so that they'll all actually have elbow room once they're standing on it while Oikawa winks, something you can only decipher because of the way his head tilts as the haze over your eye has come back, and yells back, "I think we're good here, (Y/n)-chan. It's stable."

"Alright," you murmur then turn to the rest of your apprentices, "Everyone, start making your way to the cloud. One person at a time so Tanaka can get a feel for it, don't want anyone to fall from so high up." Now properly trepidatious and careful, they get up and move to do as you say. "Yai," you call, and both he and Ginhi look over before he goes to you.

"Yes, (Y/n)?"

"I want you to run over to King Navoi's and give him a head's up that we're coming." You summon a (f/c) ribbon and tie it around his wrist. "You're the one who can reach him fastest and you'll be trying to beat us literally riding the wind in getting there."

"Of course, Mistress," He informally but respectfully bows his head to you, ribboned hand over his heart.

"It's fine," you hear faintly, and look over just in time to see Ginhi very formally thanking a lightly grimacing Kenma before jogging over to you, Yai, and Tsukishima.

"I'll be with you, Yai." The smallest of fond smiles is directed at the other Shikigami, before Ginhi defers to you, "With your permission, Great Sorceress." He smiles at you gratefully when you nod without hesitation and then he looks to his lover expectantly.

Yai sends him a playful smirk. "Only if you think you can keep up."

"Watch me," Ginhi growls with an answering smirk.

They both change into their other forms in bright flashes of caramel and turquoise light, Yai's head only a few scant inches higher than Ginhi's massive silver and white wolf form, not including the antlers. The glowing white designs around Ginhi's eyes, swirling lines that are mirrors to the markings on Yai's coat, make the shine of playfulness in them all the more obvious as Yai challengingly digs a hoof into the ground before nudging his shoulder.

Yai darts off without warning and Ginhi bounds after him, yipping cheerfully. In less than a second, they're across the clearing and through your wards.

You smile after them. "Saps." You then whistle up at the three in the air, calling them down for a rest before the long journey.

**-So said it was, and so it was said.-**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay, now there's seriously going to be a bit of a wait before the next chapter comes out, I AM DETERMINED TO BREAK THE WORD COUNTER. at the time of me just finishing typing up this without edits the counter for this prologue says, 435686 characters left, so i know i have a ways to go. wish me luck!
> 
> in the meantime, have some author trivia for this chapter:
> 
> i had assigned specific types of 'sight' for each of the colors Tsukki's eyes turn into but i never wrote them down so now they're lost in the endless void of my horrible memory. i know one was supposed to be thermal vision, tho
> 
> that thing about bird's bones not being hollow is true and i was a little shocked to discover so when i was doing research for this. don't judge me everybody overturns misconceptions throughout their life, you have too probably, i know it. also, please picture with me, owl!Bokuto doing that Shia Labeouf pose and screeching, "JUST DO IIIIIIIIT!!!"
> 
> i think i read somewhere that when Oikawa graduates he goes on to major in some kind of science so i like the idea that he thinks more technically than abstractly. also i looked up whether or not cloudy ice is caused by pure or impure water, turns out it's only cloudy when its pure, go figure
> 
> the reader was super nervous about the wind being offended by Hinata because the wind and flames do not mix well
> 
> i love my gay shikigami! in the first draft i got so happy writing 'his lover' that i got pronoun happy and on my second read through i was like, "there's no way to tell who's doing what here, damn," so i had to change it :'( 
> 
> also, if you read any of my other stories, a few like A Price Paid, A Favor Owed, Trick of the Light, and Upload Mischief will be updating soon but the author notes will be weird because i typed them up a while before i finished typing up and editing the actual story. they'll be a little peek into what's been happening to me that i couldn't update in so long, if anybody cares about that.
> 
> And remember, the magic is always there, you only have to look for it. :)
> 
> Images and characters of Haikyuu do not belong to me, they belong to Haruichi Furudate and the respective artists who I will be happy to give credit to should they reach out to me.
> 
> The Kings and some of the creatures our heroes come across do belong to me, along with the map of Yevoll and Solidarity, Mashiro Kim, my fabulous little gossip, Kaen, Yai, Ginhi, Stel-LLLLAAAAAAAAA, and mysterious merman dude whose name will be disclosed at a later date.


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